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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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KANSAS 

As She Has 
Grown Up 



AND SOMETHING ABOUT 



MONTGOMERY 
— COUNTY — 

HER MOST MARVELOUS SECTION 
AND ITS NATURAL RESOURCES 
AND INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 



BY H. W. YOUNG. 

EDITOR INDEPENDENCE TIMES. 

1907 



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Kansas as She has Grown Up. 

"What's the matter with Kansas?" 

The injection of this query and William Allen White's 
answer to it into the political campaign of 1896 was the dash 
of humor that set the whole nation laughing and made White 
one of our literary celebrities. 

Whatever Kansas has been or has done in the past, she 
has never been humdrum nor uninteresting. The struggle 
of her quarreling parents of the North and South for her 
possession, in her infancy, focused all eyes on the territory 
that has since become the central state of the Union, It was 
then that America's greatest pulpit orator exhorted his con- 
gregation to send Sharpe's rifles rather than bibles to the 
nascent commonwealth. Those were the days of John 
Brown and Quantrell, of the Lecompton constitution and 
guerilla raids, of midnight murder and daylight conflagra- 
tion. 

A few years later Kansas came into the limelight as a 
mendicant. Grasshoppers had devoured every tender twig, 
the drouth had parched her prairies and the blood-thirsty 
red men and fiery siroccos had completed the work of her 
impoverishment, until in every hamlet in the east the hat 
was passed for her and donations of money, bread and cast- 
off clothing solicited. 

Another decade rolled by and it was the mortgage and 
money lender that were sapping her resources and retard- 
ing her growth. The eastern capitalist was forced to forego 
his interest on the unfruitful acres, and the holders of ma- 
turing obligations had no option except to take the titles of 
undesired holdings at the lonesome sales the sheriffs held in 
ever-increasing number at "the south door of the court 
house." And the metropolitan press moralized much on the 
plight of the confiding capitalist, and indited long homilies 
on the innate untrustworthiness of the Kansas citizen. 

Again in the nineties, the curtain rises with Kansas the 
national joke — the clown in the comedy. Her long-whiskered 
populists and short-haired suffragists, her Wilham Drivel 



2 KANSAS AS SHE HAS GROWN UP. 

Peffers and her Mary Yellin' Leases, her Alliance picnics 
and her free-silver agitators, kept up a continuous perform- 
ance, which was greeted with loud guffaws from Eastport to 
San Diego. 

The American people have wept with Kansas as a victim 
of multiplying misfortune or laughed at her as the nation's 
madca}); but they have never really understood or appreciat- 
ed her, nor can they now realize that the infant terrible has 
<;r()wn up and settled down to business. We have all known 
some young girl whose parents were in straightened circutii- 
stances, who was growing up barefooted, hoydenish and un- 
trained, a nuisance and a terror to all except her nearest 
relatives — and not always a joy to them. Begging for nickels 
and later borrowing books which she never remembered to 
return, lacking reverence for anybody or anything, mimicing 
her elders and making life miserable for her companions 
with her practical jokes, she has seemed about as unpromis- 
ing material for womanhood as could be imagined. But after 
a few years have passed, how often has it happened that we 
have seen this same apparently hopeless specimen of every- 
thing that was unattractive in girlhood, with changing cir- 
cumstances, flower out into a woman of wonderful charm. 
Her lank ungainly figure has rounded into graceful curves 
and lines of beauty; she has emerged from the chrysalis.and 
as the ugliness of the moth has been succeeded by the beau- 
ty of the butterfly, we have seen her, with pouting ruby lips, 
damask cheeks and compelling eyes, drawing to her side 
and making a devoted admirer of whomsoever she would, by 
the spell of her magnetism. 

Whether the reader has ever thought of it or not, this is 
just what has happened to Kansas. She has simply grown 
uj). Nowhere else in the world can you now find another 
equal area where a million and a-half of people are living 
such abundant lives— full to the brim of industry, useful- 
ness, prospc^rity and happiness. Nowhere else can you find 
the average of intelligence higher, the sting of poverty so 
little felt, or the overflowing products of meadow, field and 
garden so well distributed. 

With almost a hundred millions of money in her banks; 
with mortgages paid and new houses built and furnished 
with every luxury craved by a refined taste; with Nature so 



AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OF KANSAS. 3 

lavishly bountiful that the products of her farms during the 
past year have reached the incomprehensible total of 238 
millions of dollars; with multijMying schools and colleges, 
churches and opera houses; with shaded blue grass on her 
lawns and a sky of tourmaline over her head, Kansas is do- 
ing very well today, we thank you. Assure her a square 
deal in the future and she will not only ask no odds, but will 
always have something for her less fortunate neighbors — as 
when she poured out from her bounteous stores, train load 
after train load of corn and meat, bread and clothing, for the 
stricken city of San Francisco. 

Abundance Without a Parallel. 

It was no figure of speech when I referred to the mar- 
velous production of Kansas' fertile acres during the year of 
grace 1906. There lies before me as I write a card seut out 
over the signature of P. D. Coburn, the man who turned his 
back on an offered United States senatorship because he had 
rather continue to serve the people of Kansas as Secretary 
of the State Board of Agriculture. Above all things Coburn 
is conservative in his statistics, preferring rather to under- 
state than to risk going beyond the truth. And these are 
some of the figures he sends out: Wheat crop of 1906, 77 
millions of bushels worth 53 million dollars; corn crop for 
the same year, 190 million bushels worth 68 million dollars; 
total for both crops 122 millions of dollars. This is a greater 
aggregate for these two crops than any other state north or 
south, east or west, can boast. Kansas has for years held 
the first rank in wheat production, raising more of that sta- 
ple than any other 80,000 square miles on the surface of this 
planet. And though not first in corn, she has long stood at 
the head in wheat and corn combined. 

Besides these two, there are other field crops whose yield 
makes a total of 64 millions of dollars, while animals slaught- 
ered or sold for slaughter add 52 millions more. So it ap- 
pears that, of farm products alone, Kansas produced in a sin- 
gle year a value of $150 for each man, woman and child in the 
state, or 1750 for the average family. Her wheat crop would 
furnish bread for one-fourth of the inhabitants of the entire 
nation; or for the peojjle of twelve states as populous as she. 
If every other state produced as much food in proportion 



4 MINERAL WEALTH IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY. 

to i)()i)ulation as Kansas, we should have to seek new markets 
for it in some other portion of the solar system, for the earth 
would be inundated by the unconsumable abundance. 

It is no longer the valley of the Nile that most fittingly 
tyjiities i)henomenal production; the prairies of -Kansas fur- 
nish food for our race in richer profusion and send out to 
the loss favored sections of the earth a greater surplus than 
tlic world has ever seen parallelled in all its ])ast. 

New Sources of Prosperity. 

A state blessed with such agricultural abundance would 
seem to need ncHhing more to make her rich, contented and 
famous; but the story of Kansas' wealth is only half told 
when Coburn's Aladdin-like reports have been scanned. 
Valuable deposits of coal oil and gas, the bulk of them 
brought to light since the dawn of the present century, have 
made some sections of the state rich beyond computation, 
aside from the prolitic soil those sections share in common 
with the rest. 

Wliile we have no exact statistics of the underground 
crop produced in Kansas during the past year, the fact that 
in the one county of Montgomery, on oil and gas properties 
alone, a single comjiany has paid taxes on a valuation of 
♦0^9,000, assessed as one-fourth of the actual value, is suffi- 
ciently suggestive. 

A County of Wonderful Resources. 

Let us now take a more detailed view of the one county 
just mentioned. Montgomery county is one of the southern 
tier, and tho third from the Missouri line. It adjoins the 
new state of Oklahoma on the south. Its area is only 700 
square miles, but while only a one-handred-and-fourteenth 
]mrt of the state's acreage, it contains one-twenty-eighth of 
her people. In rank, Montgomery stands third in popula- 
tion, being exceeded only by Shawnee with the state capital 
and Wyandotte with the state's ])art of the great Kansas 
City metropolis. In wealth, according to the assessor's fig- 
ures, Montgomery holds the tifth place, although in real val- 
ues she belongs a notch or two higher. 

A little mori' than eight years ago, when the census of 
1898 was taken, Montgomery county had a population of 
*26,632. Last June, our annual enumeration showed 55,710. 



GROWTH IN POPULATION AND WEALTH. 5 

There was a gain of 29,078 in eight years, or more than 100 
per cent. Between 1902 and 1906 the gain was 23,777, or at 
the rate of 5,9-14 a year, which was more than 18 per cent. 
During the same four years Independence grew from 6,208 
to 13,504 and Coffey ville from 6,673 to 16,467. The county 
now has not less than 60,000 people, more than half of whom 
are living in the two cities of Independence and Coffey ville, 
which are only 18 miles apart and are to be connected by the 
Union Traction Company's Interurban line now nearly com- 
pleted. 

If this were a booming mining camj^, or our cities were 
suburbs of some great center of population like Chicago or 
St. Louis, such a record as they are making might not be 
deemed surprising; but there has been nothing like a boom 
and the products of the lands of the county, and the multi- 
plication of its industrial plants are alone responsible for the 
solid and lasting growth we have witnessed here. 

Phenomenal Growth in Wealth. 

Assessed values in Kansas furnish but a meagre criter- 
ion of actual wealth, the rule being, as suggested a little 
while ago, to put all kinds of property on the rolls at not 
more than one-fourth of its actual value, while in many cases 
the figures lack much of reaching even that fraction. And 
yet from this nominal one-fourth valuation of $4,046,804 in 
1900, the total for the county has risen to $8,761,138 in 1906, 
a gain of 116 per cent, in the six years. At the same time 
Independence jumped from a valuation of $420,853 in 1900 to 
11,237,903 last year, an advance of almost 200 per cent. And 
in that period Coffey ville's valuation rose from $456,477 to 
$1,691,388, an increase of 270 per cent. 

While these rival cities have been growing in wealth 
with such tremendous strides, the farm lands of Montgom- 
ery county have not been at a standstill, and it is safe to say 
that the entire real estate of the county would easily com- 
mand double the figures today that it could have been sold 
for five years ago. 

In this county, as in the state at large, corn and wheat 
are the leading farm crops. Indeed in the city of Coffey ville 
there are two flouring mills of 800 barreis per day capacity 



{\ THE WOHLD S IDEAL FUEL. 

- sufticiont alone to furnish all the bread for a third of the 
popuhition of the state, or half a million people. 

It is noteworthy that Montgomery county ha.s in some 
seasons had a crop of over 1,600,000 bushels of wheat, and 
that it lies fartlier (nist than any other county that Secretary 
Coburn has ever marked down as lying in the "Kansas 
Wheat bell." The ordinary corn crop of the county, taking 
one year with another is usually a little in excess of a mil- 
lion ami a-half bushels. 

All sorts of fruits and vegetables known in the temper- 
ate zone are successfully grown here. Peas ripen early in 
•Nhiy and potatoes are ready to dig in the latter part of that 
month. That is also the month of strawberries, which with 
blackberries are grown in immense (quantities. One of the 
principal berry growers of the county, living midway be- 
tween Coffey ville and Independence, is now congratulating 
himself that with the Interurban in operation he will here- 
after be able to place his ijroducts on the market within an 
hour after picking. As transportation facilities improve 
and rates became more reasonable, early fruits and vegeta- 
bles will be grown here in larger and larger quantities for 
the northern markets. 

An Ideal Fuel that Transports Itself. 

( )f all the gifts of Nature to this favored section, though, 
no other is so highly appreciated or is doing so much to add 
to its po])ulation, multiply its manufacturing institutions, or 
increase its wealth, as the wonderful fuel, which like the 
rock when touched by Aaron's rod, has only to be reached 
by the drill to cause it to flow forth to supply furnaces, 
stoves and lamp.s, furnishing heat and light at any distance 
and transjiorting itself to the place where it is needed. The 
reports of the County Gas Inspector, after his semi-annual 
test of the gas wells of the county, show that the wells al- 
ready drilled here have a capacity of more than 1,000 million 
cubie feet of gas per day. 

It is only very recently that the extent and capacity of 
this gas Held begun to be realized. Until 1902 none of the 
big gassers had been found, and it was not until 1904 that the 
great gas tield four miles south of Independence was discov- 
ered. Here, on the Crane, the Thompson, the Wingard, the 



MONTGOMERY COUNTY'S GAS FIELD. 7 

Bennett, the Dow, the Stone, the DeVore, and other farms, 
more than a score of wells have been drilled, ranging in ca- 
pacity from 7 to 30 millions of cubic feet per day. 

The Greatest Gas Field in the World. 

At the accepted estimate of 20,000 cubic feet of natural 
gas as equivalent to a ton of coal, the developed natural gas 
in Montgomery county is equal to a coal output of 60,000 tons 
of coal a day for heat production. This would load 3,000 cars, 
which would make a hundred trains of thirty cars each. 
These trains would cover thirty- three miles of raUroad 
track; and the entire yearly output of gas would rival in ef- 
ficiency coal enough to load a continuous train of twenty-ton 
cars that would reach half way around the globe, or from 
pole to pole. To make these estimates more practical, how- 
ever, it must be borne in mind that no gas well can be drawn 
on for its full capacity without speedily ruining it. But with 
a 10 per cent, drain, wells here continue to produce gas with- 
out a sensible diminution of pressure or product; and a divi- 
sion of the figures above by ten, showing a possible annual 
fuel production from the gas wells of the county of the 
equivalent of 190,500 car-loads of coal, is sutficiently sugges- 
tive. 

It is unquestionable that we have here in Montgomery 
county and in the neighboring portion of the Indian territo- 
ry the greatest gas field ever discovered in the world. Not 
that there is as yet as much developed production as in some 
other fields; but that the area of proven gas territory is vast- 
ly larger and the wells as strong as have ever been found 
anywhere. Indeed, the development of this gas field has 
hardly begun; and already it makes a showing of product 
that throws in the shade any other gas field at a similar stage 
of development. Oil and gas have both been found so far 
south in the Indian Territory as wells have been drilled, and 
with the enormous production of gas already secured in this 
county, and unlimited supplies to the south of us, there is no 
probability that our gas will be exhausted or even diminish- 
ed during the lifetime of the present generation. 

immense Coal Deposits in Reserve. 

And not only has this county the largest developed gas 
field in the west, with a capacity of a billion feet a day, but as 



8 TWO GREAT CEMENT PLANTS. 

a reserve behind the gas it has immense coal deposits, veins 
running as high as eleven feet in thickness lying six miles 
to the north of Independence, at a depth of 935 feet. Prom 
these can be drawn an abundant supply of fuel for all our fac- 
tories, present and prospective, should so improbable an 
event as the exhaustion of our gas ever come to pass. 

As manufacturing and distributing centers no other 
cities in the southwest possess the advantages that belong 
to Independence and Coffeyville. Standing at the gateway 
of Oklahoma and the raijidly developing region which has 
made so wonderful a growth in the past decade, they are in a 
])()siti()n to become the markets for a vast area which they 
can at the same time supply with manufactured products. 

Two nillion Dollar Cement Plants. 

Since the extent of our gas territory and the volume of 
oui- gas resources became evident, manufactures have been 
established here such as were never even dreamed of six 
years ago. First among these is the Western States Port- 
land Cement Company's plant, which was erected in 1904 at 
a cost of 11,500,000, and has been in operation nearly two 
years. Its original capacity has been increased during that 
time, until it is now able to turn out 8,000 barrels of cement 
per day, worth over 84,000. This plant is located on an in- 
exhaustible deposit of Indej)endence limestone, with the re- 
(luirt'd shale immediately contiguous, and the company owns 
about SOO acres of this land. It employs 500 men and is con- 
nected with the Missouri Pacific railroad b^'a spur track two 
and a half miles long. 

In June, 1906, the second cement plant went into opera- 
tion here. This was erected by the Independence Kansas 
Portland Cement Company on the eastern flank of Table 
Mound, four miles northwest of Independence, and cost a 
million dollars. It has a capacity equal to that of the West- 
ern States plant and employs 475 men. Here this company 
owns the whole mound, occupying an area of more than a 
square mile, cap})ed with the lola limestone to the depth of 
25 to 30 feet and containing raw material enough to keep the 
plant turning out 3,000 barrels of cement a day for some 
hundred years to come. 

As large a figure as these two plants cut among the in- 
dustries of the county, and as much as they have done to 



THE VITRIFIED BRICK INDUSTRY. 9 

promote the recent growth and prosperity of Independence, 
they do not tell the whole story. Four other companies are 
now organized and each has secured several hundred acres 
of limestone land, with gas rights and ample capital, so that 
before the close ot 1907 there seems to be little doubt that 
active work will be in progress on as many more million 
dollar plants, trebling the present product in this line and 
adding 2,000 more workmen to the population of Independ- 
ence and its suburbs. 

Fourteen Vitrified Brick Plants. 

Montgomery county's second largest industry is the 
manufacture of vitrified brick for paving and building pur- 
poses. The shale found in her mounds and hills is excellent- 
ly adapted for making these brick, which are of almost flinty 
hardness; and there are fourteen factories of this sort in 
operation in the limits of the county. Five of these are lo- 
cated at Cherryvale, three at Coffeyville, one at Independ- 
ence, two at Sycamore and one each at Caney, Tyro and Elk 
City. These plants represent an investment of more than a 
million dollars and employ 800 men. 

With these home-made paving brick, the streets are be- 
ing paved in the principal cities of the county. In Inde- 
pendence, the county seat, the business section is already 
entirely paved, as well as the streets running to each of the 
railroad depots. When the work already ordered, and under 
construction is completed, there will be more than four miles 
of such paved streets in -this city, and a considerable addi- 
tional section has been curbed and guttered, ready for pav- 
ing. 

Within the past year the Standard Asphalt and Rubber 
Company's plant has been erected and put in operation at 
Independence. This company gets its raw material from 
the oil fields of the county through its own pipe lines, and 
uses the heavier portion, after the distillates have been 
taken off, in the making of insulating material, rooting, 
paints and other products. It has a capitalization of $750, - 
000 and is the first factory of its kind in the world. A hun- 
dred hands are employed here, and the number will be 
largely increased in the future. When its full capacity is 



10 EXTENT OF THE GLASS INDUSTRY 

reached it will be shipping twenty or thirtj^ cars a da^' of 
rooting paper prepared by its patented processes, besides 
dozens of other products. 

A Centre of the Glass Making Industry. 

The glass making industry was inaugurated in Mont- 
gomery county less than five years ago by the estab- 
lishment of the Midland plant at Independence. From 
that beginning it has grown and multipUed as plants 
have been removed here from the exhausted gas fields 
of Indiana, until the county now has fifteen window 
and bottle glass plants. Three of these are located at Inde- 
pendence, eight at Coffeyville, one at Cherryvale, one at 
Caney and two at Tyro. All of these towns will be on the 
trolley lines the Union Traction company is preparing to 
build in this county. 

The Independence glass plants are the Midland, the 
Osage and the Western Window Glass. They represent an 
investment of ij!225,000 and employ 200 hands. In addition 
to these, however, contracts have been made for the remov- 
al of the three Johnston Window Glass plants from Dunkirk 
and Hartford City, Indiana, to this city; and by the time the 
tires begin in the fall of 1907 it is expected to have them all 
in operation here. They represent a capitalization of 8500,- 
000 and are of 132 pots capacity. Added to the 60 pot capa- 
city of the existing plants here, this will give a total of 192 
pots for Independence. The new plants will employ 660 
hands, adding 3,000 or 4,000 to the population of the city and 
130,000 to its monthly pay roll. 

The Coffeyville Glass plants are: The Marion Fruit Jar 
and Bottle Company, the Coffeyville Window Glass Compa- 
ny, the Sunflower Glass Company, the Kansas Glass Compa- 
ny, the Pioneer Flint Glass Company, the Coffeyville Bottle 
and Glass Company, the Mason Fruit Jar Company, and the 
Coffeyville Novelty and Glass Company. The total capitali- 
zation of these various plants is $660,000, and they together 
employ 1,350 people. Not only is the cheap fuel an attrac- 
tion to glass factories, but extensive deposits of glass sand 
have been discovered in this section, which will reduce very 
considerably the cost of the raw material. 



THE SMELTERS AND MINOR INDUSTRIES. 11 

Smelters at Four Points in the County. 

Another great industry in Montgomery county is the 
smelter business. At Cherryvale the Edgar Zinc Company 
has been in operation for several years, and with an invest- 
ment of #500,000 gives employment to 450 men. The Caney 
Smelter is about half as large and has 250 hands. The Ozark 
Smelter now under construction at Colfeyville will cost 
1150,000 and have 125 men on its pay roll. The new Lanyon 
Smelter at Deering, five miles west of Coffeyville on the 
Union Traction Company's line, has been under construction 
for several months past and will soon go into operation with 
a force of 200 men. Here the smelter people have con- 
structed fifty houses for their employes, and this little ham- 
let is having a great growth and promises soon to become a 
young city. 

The cement, smelter, vitrified brick and glass indus- 
tries in Montgomery county, taken together, will before the 
close of the present year be giving employment to more 
than 5,000 men, and another year will probably see the total 
for these industries increased to 7,000. 

A List of Varied Industries. 

Among the minor industries which go to make up a 
grand aggregate in Independence are the following: 

The Kansas Cracker Company, with an investment of 
$25,000 and 40 people employed. 

The Bowen Milling Company, with a capitalization of 
$100,000 and furnishing employment for 35 hands. 

The Bovaird Machine Shops, with $50,000 capital and 45 
people employed. 

The Independence Iron Company, with $40,000 and forty 
people. 

The Independence Standard Drill Company, $6,000 and 
five people. 

The Independence Ice Company, $50,000 and 25 hands. 

The Crystal Ice and Cold Storage Company, $35,000 and 
12 men. 

The Jones Confection Company, $7,500 and 12 hands. 

The Independent Paper Company, $50,000 and 75 people. 

The American Concrete Company, $6,000 and 20 hands. 



12 BUILDINGS AND BUSINESS AT INDEPENDENCE. 

The Baden Wholesale Produce and Grocery, $100,000 
and 30 people". 

The North Side Planing Mill, $5,000 and 6 men. 

The Independence Bottling Works. 

The Electric Light and Power Company, $25,000 and ten 
men. 

There also located in Independence the headquarters of 
the Prairie Oil and Gas Company, the producing branch of 
the Standard Oil company, with fifty people employed, and 
the general oflices of the Kansas Natural Gas company, a 12 
million corporation, with 40 more. 

At its tank farm adjoining the city of Caney, the Prairie 
Oil and Gas company has 500,000 barrels of crude oil in stor- 
age and during the past season it has had 450 men engaged 
in tank buikling there. 

Schools, Banks and Public Buildings at Independence. 

Independence has a County High School with over 200 
pupils in attendance and a faculty of ten instructors. The 
school was opened in 1899, the building and plant costing 
$3(),0(.»0. Besides there are two city school buildings erected 
Mve years ago at a cost of $60,000, and three more under 
construction which will require an expenditure of $80,000 to 
complete. 

In this city there are also at the opening of 1907 a mod- 
ern theatre building, to cost $40,000, and a Carnegie Library 
building, for which $20,000 has been appropriated, both un- 
der roof and nearing completion. 

From this city, which is not only the county seat but al- 
so centrally located in the county, the Union Traction com- 
pany's lines will radiate to Coffey ville, Cherry vale and 
Caney. 

Independence has three national banks, and a fourth is 
shortly to be established. Of the three, the I'"'irst National 
has a capital of $50,000 and a surplus of $83,000; the Com- 
mercial National, $75,000 capital and $60,000 surplus; the 
Citizens National, $150,000 cajntal and $75,000 surplus, mak- 
ing a total banking cajiital of 450 thousand dollars. At their 
last statement, made in November 1906, these banks had de- 
posits as follows: The First National, $698,160; The Com mer- 



coffeyville's mills and factories. 13 

cial National, 11,034,132; the Citizens National, $672,685. All 
told this counts up $2,394,977 in the three banks at that date. 

Coffeyville a Hive of Busy Industry. 

At Coffeyville, in addition to the industries before men- 
tioned, there are the following in miscellaneous lines: 

The North Star Manufacturing company, a flouring mill, 
with $200,000 capital and 125 hands employed. 

The Rea-Patterson Milling company, with $250,000 capi- 
tal and 100 hands. 

The Grisham-Kiddoo Milling company, with 25 thousand 
dollars capital and 15 men. 

The Coffeyville Pottery and Clay company, 35 thousand 
dollars invested and 30 people employed. 

The Coffeyville Excelsior company, 40 thousand dollars 
capital and 20 people. 

The Hall-Baker Elevator, 40 thousand dollars and 15 peo- 
ple. 

The Walker Grain Elevator, 25 thousand dollars and 15 
people. 

The Kansas Wood Fibre company, 10 thousand dollars 
and ten people. 

Wells Brothers Produce and Grocery company, 25 
thousand dollars and 15 people. 

Ruthrauff Brothers Planing Mill, $2,000 and 20 men. 

Enders Planing Mill, five thousand dollars and 6 people. 

Coffeyville Novelty Works, five thousand dollars and 20 
people. 

Gillette's Bottling Works, five thousand dollars and 5 
people. 

Ice Cream Factory, five thousand dollars and 5 people. 

Coffeyville Ice Works, 50 thousand dollars and 60 people. 

Cold Storage company, 40 thousand dollars and 6 people. 

Western Roofing Tile company, 50 thousand dollars and 
60 people. 

Ziegler Neckyoke Company, 10 thousand dollars and 5 
people. 

Four divisions of the Missouri Pacific railroad end at 
Coffeyville, and there are employed in the general offices 100 
people, and in the round house and shops 75 men. 



14 BUILDING UP A MANUFACTURING SECTION. 

Operations have begun by the National Refining compa- 
ny, of Cleveland, Ohio, who are building a 4,000 barrel refin- 
ery, employing lUO men and to cost 750 thousand dollars. 

Coffeyville last fall opened her new Jefferson Theatre, a 
tine modern structure, complete in every detail, at an ex- 
pense of 30 thousand dollars. 

At Tyro, on the south side of the county, between Cof- 
feyville and Caney, a ^20,000 brick plant has just been erec- 
ted that will employ 50 men, and has a capacity of 60,000 per 
day. Work is about to begin there on the construction of 
two new glass plants, a 36-blower Diamond Glass factory 
and a 36-blower Window Glass Plant. These factories will 
employ 130 men and have a pay roll of $15,000 per month. 

Two large Vitrified Brick plants are located at Syca- 
more, north of Independence, which employ 160 men. 

Looking Forward and Backward. 

Taken altogether, the manufacturing institutions already 
in operation or now under construction in Montgomery coun- 
ty, represent an investment of 8 millions of dollars and fur- 
nish employment to about 7,000 men. Those which are prac- 
tically assured and will be erected in the next two years will 
represent 5 millions additional capital and 5,000 more wage 
earners. 

The reader is no doubt surfeited with facts and figures 
by this time, but in no other way than by presenting them 
would it be possible to convey any adequate idea of what has 
been done and what is being done in the way of building up 
a manufacturing center here in the heart of the great west- 
ern gas field, nor of the vast capital that is finding profitable 
investment in what was a few years ago a humdrum agricul- 
tural section with no hint of the surprises the future was 
to bring. Indeed, we have to look back less than forty years 
to see what is now Montgomery county part of an Indian 
reservation, and the government making treaties with the 
Osages who then occupied all this section, by which they 
were to sell their lands for the *1.25 per acre the govern- 
ment afterwards charged the settlers. And that single 
acres of tho.se lauds in the business section of Independence 
and Coffeyville are now worth as much as the half a million 



A SATURDAY NIGHT SPECTACLE. 15 

dollars these Indians realized for the entire 400,000 acres 
comprised in the county, is only one of the myriads of simi- 
lar marvels that have accompanied the growing up of Kan- 
sas and the neighboring states of the great western section 
that they used to tell us was a "desert." 

Look up the main streets of Independence or Coffey- 
ville this Saturday night; and observe how they are thronged 
with well dressed people from all the walks of life; see those 
streets lined with two and three story brick blocks, bright 
with gas and electric lights and here and there flaming out 
with rythmic signs, and you will agree with me that real 
cities are growing up here in this marvelous section. Or 
wait until the morrow and ride over our paved streets and 
note the hundreds of modern residences and comfortable 
homes from which the crowds are wending their ways to our 
churches and Sunday schools, and you will further agree 
that the material wealth that is being multiplied here with 
such bewildering rapidity is not entirely dwarfing our spirit- 
ual natures or leading us to forget that there is nothing a 
man can afford to take in exchange for his soul. 



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